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Request to speakers of languages other than English, French and German (lemy.lol)

submitted 23 hours ago by shads@lemy.lol to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Hi thanks for looking at my query. I recently as a joke changed some writing on the board of a friends EAL (English as an Additional Language) classroom from English to German. She liked the idea, but using Google Translate resulted in an overly formal phrasing that made it seem more a demand than a suggestion or polite request.

So my ask, if you speak (or I guess write) another language I would love to request you take a moment to translate "Please stack chairs at the end of the day" into whichever language you can help me with, it should be a polite request though.

I'm really not sure what the composition of her class is but she is a fan of languages as a whole so even if it's not a language that is represented in her class I am sure it will be a bit of fun and a talking point to figure it out.

If you have the time and the skills to help I really appreciate it, otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to read this post. Have a fantastic day.

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[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

In spanish there are two ways to refer to people, one is formal and another one is informal. When you want to talk to someone in a formal way you must use verbs in a special form with a special personal pronoun called "usted".

Formal way: "Usted es muy guapo" (You are so handsome).
Informal way: "Eres muy guapo" (You are so handsome).

Look how in the first sentence we used "usted" and then we used the verb "ser" in third person and in present tense. In the second example we use directly the verb "ser" in imperfect tense. I could wrote "Por favor, usted apile las sillas al final del día. Gracias", but that's too much formal, to the point that can be felt like passive-agressive to some people, since people doesn't use "usted" too often before the verb. Even you can say "Es muy guapo" too keep the formal but more in a casual way.

I'm a native speaker, not a teacher or something, so, please, refer to this site to get more information. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usted